


Unconventional Paternity

by BoxofButtons



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: All hail nortonn7, Gen, Kidfic, So Your Child Is Human, Warnings on the inside, Wrex Adopts Shepard, and I will laugh, oh god this will end horribly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-18 02:26:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxofButtons/pseuds/BoxofButtons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Kmeme prompt: </p><p>"Wrex raises Shep, goes all out. He learns what not to feed his new kid, reads the "so your child is human" books and pamphlets all while trying to do his job as a Merc. I want me some platonic Wrex and Shep adventures in headbutting, cross culture family oddness, the birds and bees talk from a krogan to his non-genophaged child, any of it. All of it."</p><p>F!Shep, as requested by the prompt, with Wrex stumbling through parenthood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Year 1 / The Lost Child

**Author's Note:**

> As it says on the tin, written for the Mass Effect Kink Meme.
> 
> WARNINGS:  
> Shep goes through a traumatizing event off-screen. This consists of the THREAT, not the act, only the threat, of rape to a young girl and sexual advances made by a teenager. Nothing occurs during the fic but it is implied in several places and Shepard is still recovering years later.
> 
> Things will also get shot at and die. But that is just part of the Mass Effect gig.
> 
> Wrex is also a Krogan. They are sometimes unaware of their own strength and just how fragile we squishy humans are.
> 
>  
> 
> Prompt found here : http://masseffectkink.livejournal.com/6870.html?thread=30662870#t30662870 
> 
> I really love writing kidfic. I adore it so when I saw this unfilled prompt I had to go all out. The fic starts in 2161, Shepard is seven, Wrex is old. Everyone was emotionally damaged, the end.
> 
> All hail nortonn7, my poor shmuck of a beta.

Unconventional Paternity

Year 1: July 23, 2161. Zakeera Ward.

 

            “I’m sorry!” squeaked the tiny human who ran into him, a shock of rust red and wide eyes as she hurtled towards a lift. He would remember that look years later, the way bravado etched over her face like a mask, the cadence of her labored breath as she spoke her first words to him, the desperate flex in her too thin legs, but Wrex never remembered what made him actually stop her.

            “What’s the rush kid?” he asked her solemnly, catching her shoulder in one massive hand “You lost?”

            “No, sir. Please, I gotta go, before-“ her entire body tensed as a band of children rounded the corner, no they weren’t hatchlings, they were old enough to put up a fight against adults of their respective species. Teenagers in standard terms. They merely slowed to a casual walk when they saw him. Fearless little shits. “Before them.” The girl whispered in a resigned voice.

            “There you are Red, we thought you got lost for a second there.” Wrex turned an eye to this boy, a human as well, who swaggered up with a saccarine smile on his lips. “Thank you for finding her Mister.” Foolish punk tried to grab the kid’s wrist and pulled his hand back swearing in pain. So the little one did have some fight.

            “Don’t think she wants to go with you.” The girl – Red – looked up at him like he was something more than beat up old armor and scars for a moment. Always did have a soft spot for kids. “Think maybe you should leave her be, Junior. Honestly I can’t blame her now that I caught a whiff of you.”

            “Oh don’t worry, girls like _her_ always come back.” He responded, anger visibly seeping into his words. Wrex hardly had time to process the sentence before he had to restrain a howling whirlwind of human girl.

            “Fuck you Fist! Fuck yourself because nobody else ever will! I should have done more than kicked you! I should have stabbed you in the fucking balls for that!” Red was working herself into a fine frenzy there. “Go to hell and stay there!” With that, Wrex decided enough was enough and carried her off into the lift. He pressed a button that would take them to a nicer area, one with benches hopefully because he was damn well finding out why her parents weren’t protecting her from shit like that.

She was still red-faced and hiccuping by the time he settled them on a bench in the commecial district of Zakera Ward, he waited as she pulled her shit back together bit by bit until she was breathing quietly again. “Thanks. That- you didn’t have to do that.”

            “Course I did, nobody else was doing it.” He scoffed at the idea of inaction “I may not know much about humans, but a kid like you is too young for that shit.” She nodded and curled in on herself, all gangly four and some feet of her trying to press into a compact entity.

            “I’m seven. And I don’t got much choice, I’ll be old enough one day.”

            “And by then your parents will have kicked your ass so hard that the void left from when your idocy fled will fill with common fucking sense.” She giggled and Wrex felt a little warmer.

            “Don’t got a mom, or dad, but maybe I will make it.” She watched the traffic above them, eyes rapt as she tracked a sleek orange number towards the Presidium. “Better than Earth was at least.”

            “Know the feeling.” Wrex mumbled “Tuchunka didn’t agree with me after a certain point. What made you come here Red?”

            “Dunno, and it’s Jane. Jane Shepard.”

            “Well then Shepard, I’m Urdnot Wrex.” She smiled and they went back to watching traffic.

 

 -0-

 

He realized it was crazy, even as he carried her towards the apartment he kept in Tayseri Ward, but he’d seen the area she was planning to stay in and that wasn’t an option. So what was he doing? He could hardly keep her around forever, he was a merc.

            “Here we are.” Wrex huffed, shifting his burden slightly to key in the ten digit code. “Lair sweet lair.”

            “Not much of a lair, more like a vid.” She whispered, eyes wide at the gleaming and freshly cleaned surfaces around her. Poor kid had likely never been anywhere that wasn’t a pile of shit. “Why are you doing this?”

            “Not letting that Fist brat find you again, it would be an insult to my honor.” He dropped his pack to the floor, justifying bullshit falling from his lips. “Honor is a big part of Krogan culture. Without honor we’re nothing.”

            “I can respect that.” She managed to breathe out as he set her on the floor. “Honor and all. It’s like that Chivalry Code thing. The one knights had.”

            “No clue what that is.” He huffed, pushing her gently towards the bathroom. “You go take a shower, you smell awful Shepard.” She grinned at that and sprinted to the promise of warm water, and Wrex realized tomorrow he’d have to get her better clothes than the worn ones she had.

He got to his room, shucking the armor into a pile for proper care later, he then got into his own bathroom and began the Krogan version of a shower, a wet sponge to simulate the vegetation that Krogans prefered to grind and smooth over their skin. It took a while, but he finished ten or so minutes after he heard the water turn off a room over.

He wasn't planning to be here long, and he could hardly save every damn duct-rat on the station, but this kid was one he had already saved. He had acted as her krant and that meant he had a responsibility towards her. He huffed as he pulled lightweight garments out of the dresser, sleeping clothes. Oh fuck, he'd have to loan something to the kid for her to sleep in. 

When he exited however he didn’t see the ki- he didn’t see Shepard, but he heard ragged breathing faintly through the metal. He huffed and knocked on the door to her bathroom. “You fall in or something?” she made a high pitched chocking sound and he opened the door.

She sat on the floor, green eyes wide with tears, wrapped in a towel that seemed to drown her skinny frame in a sea of Tuchunka red fabric. “Hey kid, what’s with the waterworks?”

            “I’m just-“ she sobbed and launched herself at him “I’m safe, I know it’s not forever, but I’m away, Fist didn’t catch me and then you saved me and you talked to me and you brought me here and I’m- I’m” she seemed like she was going to shake apart like a damaged ship entering atmo. Wrex was no father, he tried hard to keep away from other Krogan, he wasn’t gentle, or kind.

Yet he let her cry, allowed this human to cling onto his hump as he carried her to his room and dug around for something he could let her use as clothing, let her sleep huddled next to him on the sofa, empty take-away containers littering the floor, whispering the whole while that she was safe, that he would keep her safe.


	2. Year 3 / Always Know Where You Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's his third year with a human mucking around his ship, stealing his food from his plate, and generally being a nuisance now that he's let her into his heart.

Year 3: November 13, 2164 Nos Astra Spaceport.

            “Dammit Shepard!” Wrex bit out, looking around the market of Nos Astra for his missing charge. She had a habit of doing that, slipping away for what she called “recon” and what he called “staring at designer Asari clothing” when they were on commercial planets or stations. She was different from the scared seven year old he had rescue. It's his third year with a human mucking around his ship, stealing his food from his plate, and generally being a nuisance now that he's let her into his life.

These days the ten-year-old human was boisterous, normal even, a tiny warrior in work-worn clothing. She had gotten a pistol a year after he took her in and this year he had tossed a sniper rifle her way, one day she would be a terror in the field. It worried him a little, the idea of her running around in a hail of bullets even as an adult, but she had said that, if Wrex didn’t plan on taking over any planets and letting her live a cushy life as regent in his stead, she was hoping to join the alliance when she was old enough.

Then again if these “peanut” things could kill humans like her, he supposed she would always be in danger and bullets were at least an obvious foe.

Finding out she had allergies was terrifying, he still remembered her frightened gasps a year later, the way she trembled against the reaction as he rushed her to a presidium hospital. He had officially adopted her as his daughter, via official channels, that day. She had woken up a few hours later to see him signing the papers, actual paper! It was antiquated, but he knew she kept a copy under her bunk on the ship.

Finally in the sea of blues, greys, and purples, he saw the flash of sunrise orange near a poster for some “Blasto” vid that was due to come out next year. She had filled into the durable clothes he bought for her, was at a weight the books (he would deny that he had read “So Your Child Is Human” until his dying day) said was healthy, and had grown her hair out to a thick mass that she braided every morning. He had even deigned to learn this ‘braiding’ ritual and found it soothing, combing his fingers though her hair as she chattered on like a pyjak who had learned to read textbooks on computer sciences.

And when she turned around to face him, eyes wide and smile brilliant in the Illium sun, he knew he loved this child more than anything in the galaxy. He would bitch at her over slipping away again and she would see right through him and ask about his next contract, tease him about picking her up and setting her on his hump in a crowd, ask about what this new eezo exposure study could mean for a human kid growing up in space.

-0-

It wasn’t the sort of day he had expected  to see Shep’s first firefight, but when a squad of Blue Suns, off duty it looked like, jumped them in a disreputable and disused alleyway near the shipyards he didn’t have a choice. He heaved through the two armored men rounding the corner opposite their friends, trying to be dramatic no doubt, and gracelessly tossed the kid onto a promenade above with the help of biotics.

It was five on one, but Wrex had centuries of skill to bolster his odds as he turned a skycar on its side for cover. It should have been quick, simple, but this time he felt like it was taking forever. What if they had seen Shepard? Would they let her go, sell her to the slave trade? Did Jane have the strength to make her first kill if she had to?

It was thoughts like these that got mercs killed, so Wrex focused. He was brutal, effective as his shots ripped through armor or forced the Suns into cover, three down and two to go. He wasn’t expecting to hear a cloaking mechanism deactivate after he took a glancing blow. He knew that the Batarian next to him could put the bullt in his head, knew it was the end and for the first time he feared it.

Then the shot rang out and Wrex felt no pain. Nothing, the Batarian crumpling with a soft gurgle of blood. He spared a glance up and saw his ward, eyes wide and hands shaking around her pistol, but no regret on her face.

He felt the horror instead, Human children were more fragile than their Krogan counterparts, killing was not a part of their cultural identity and could traumatize them, according to the books. These mercenaries were unprofessional enough to attack him in public, but they also had nearly caught a kid, his kid, in the crossfire. It was enough for a bloodrage to take hold.

After that it was blurry, strange and warped as it always was with the blood. But he offed them with what could be classified as extreme prejudice and Shepard managed to stay hidden long enough that the rage wore off before he saw her cowering a few blocks away, she held up her hands like she was seven again and in need of rescue, despite the blood of mixed origins covering his face and armor. He took her into his arms and went off to call Massani about his fucking unprofessional, dead, men. He didn’t put her down for a single second until she insisted on bandaging him up now that he could feel pain again.

What did it say about her that she hadn’t cried at all? What did it say about him that he was worried because she hadn't?


	3. Year 4 / Honeybee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can’t save everyone kid, just need to save the ones you can. Remember that when you’re in the Alliance.”

Year 4: December 11, 2165. The Norak, en route to Fehl Prime

            “What? Massani got his ass kicked and we’re not going to help him? Santiago won’t honor the protective orders on us and you know it!” Wrex could feel a headache coming on as he stared down his daughter.

            “What do you expect me to do Shepard?” His voice was even and carried authority. “Should I take on every member of the Blue Suns alone?”

“No! Wrex, I could-“

“Or do you want to come with me and get me killed watching your back for you? You are eleven.” She colored a splotchy red and stormed towards the cabins. Wrex, meanwhile, slumped back in the cockpit.

She knew the way this worked, but she liked Massani, hell Wrex liked Massani after he sent them apology gifts for the attack a year ago along with Blue Suns protection if Wrex would run a few jobs and keep away from certain opportunites. Shep would be big enough for the suit of ceramic and metal armor in a few years and Wrex had heartily enjoyed the discounts at Elkoss Combine with his new license.

Still, hours later, he was the one to cave. He knocked on the door to her quarters and it opened without resistance. “Shepard.” She sat on her bed, surrounded by the omnitool she had been building since last month, the drooling mass of a varren known as Urd at her feet.

            “Wrex.”

            “We aren’t going.” She hung her head in defeat. “Massani is a decent ally, but he’s not worth a very short war.”

            “I just wish we could do something. Anything.”

            “Can’t save everyone kid, just need to save the ones you can. Remember that when you’re in the Alliance.”

            “Don’t wanna join.” She mumbled,drawing her knees up in a sulk. “I’ll be shit at it, I should just be a merc. I could watch your ass then.”

            “You think I’ll get offed the minute you’re enlisted?” He laughed harder at that than when she had brought Urd shipside as a feral whelp. “I lived centuries before I met you. I’ll live long enough to see you ruthlessly infiltrate the admiralty in your middle age.” That drew a laugh.

            “Yeah. I just want you safe though, is that too much to ask Dad?” she used the D-word, that set off a few alarms. Shepard only used the D-Word when she required emotional support.

            “Is it too much to ask that I die of natural causes before you, surrounded by a legion of human grandchildren, Jane?” She gave him a funny look and laughed before tucking herself under his chin, allowing him to run a gentle hand down her back, claws bluntly scratching just between her shoulder blades on each pass. It was quiet, peaceful.

            “So you ready to try cooking like you said? Because hell if I’m buying food and preparing it for the rest of your days. Something simple, like curry, that even a pyjack like you can’t screw up.” She cackled quietly in response.


	4. Year 6 / Build A Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Think the extranet’s got Blasto?”

Year 6: July 23, 2167, The Urdnot Apartment, Tayseri Ward

“So what’s with the whole, dinner at a nice place, fancy dress, thing?” she asked, collapsing onto the sofa like a sack of potatoes, wrinkling the extortionately priced silver Asari dress she had bought a few weeks back. Wrex thought anything that didn't have a half-inch of armoring wasn't worth wearing. “Not that I mind decent grub.” Wrex ignored her fishing and pushed her over a few cushions. She went willingly and simply turned her attention to Urd, making faces at the frankly massive varren who had claimed an armchair during their stay in the old apartment.

 

Six years ago to the day they had found each other, they had slept on this sofa surrounded by take-away cartons, had been scared and unsure in turns of how to interact with their new family. That sofa hadn't changed like the rest of the apartment. Wrex had kicked some credits towards changing his in-house trophy room into a room for the kid. She had plastered the walls in holos of places they had been, ship models from across the galaxy. It was a home away from the ship, somewhere that really felt like home.

 

“Just felt like spoiling you and getting something out of it for once.” Wrex tells her, mind refocusing on the present. “You want to watch a vid?”

 

“Think the extranet’s got Blasto?”

 

It did in fact.

 

Wrex honestly thought the movie was shit, shoddy acting and impractical stunts, but Shepard loved it. She had even jokingly claimed that if a “Big Stupid Jellyfish can manage to be a Spectre, there had better be a human one soon” and then promptly announced her inevitable candidacy for the position in the middle of the theater.

 

Wrex loved it when she did that sort of thing. It reminded him that, while she was quiet when compared to Krogan young, she was loud and brash by human standards. Jane had started to carry herself less like the world had decided to shit all over her at one point. She no longer sought affirmation that she was no burden, no longer hid from darker corners of cities out of remembrance.

 

His little girl had her stumbling blocks, things that still made her confident stride stutter. He saw her eyes flicker when they drew near groups of teenage boys, heard her breath fly from her lungs if she couldn't find at least two escape routes in a public place. He wished he had killed Fist and his little thugs, juveniles or not, wished he could make Shepard rest easy with the knowledge that her attacker was gone forever.

 

He had never gotten all of the story out of her, but he knew enough that it made him livid to think of that whelp trying to feel along her body under her clothes. It didn't make her uninterested in potential mates, thankfully. But she was still a little fucked up when it came to dealing with it. She had taken up the habit of forcing physical contact with anything, sleeping curled up with Urd, hugging the rare friends she had made over the years. She had also asked him to teach her hand to hand.

  
But that was a challenge for another day. For now he celebrated six years of healing, six years of learning, six years of Jane, by settling down and listening to that stupid jellyfish ask “Do you direct your ocular ports towards this one?”


	5. Year 8 / Guts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s two days short of fifteen

Year 8: April 9, 2169, the Norak, en route to Omega

She’s two days short of fifteen and happy.

Fifteen and gifted.

Fifteen and reckless.

She’s old enough now that Wrex no longer fears their time in the ship’s cargo hold, a 12 by 9 meter room refitted as a gym, complete with jurryrigged firing range and sparring mat. He had bought the ship just after the “Age of Jane” started up, rebuilding the cheap pile of eezo and metal for a fraction of what the custom work would have cost in a new ship. He knew a guy.

Now though, he was teaching Shepard the proper way to hurt an armored krogan if disarmed. “You’re smaller, so you have to avoid full out combat if you can, if you can’t then be smart about it. It’s common that the joints here” he indicates the frontal plate of his skull “are weak, if you can get a knife or something that feels enough like a knife, threaten to jam it under there and pry. If you do that and can get away, leave the bastard alive in shame.”

“Brutal.”

“Yeah, well you’re only trying to grab a solid hold of it. Three seconds and you win, Drunken Krogan handicap. Padding on?” She nods and he charges towards her, albeit a bit slower than he can due to the handicap he’s given her.

She’s lithe, agile, and times her jump well, using his hump as a springboard. She lands in an Asari-influenced ready stance, feet light and ready to move as he throws a punch and she darts away, not even breathing hard. He starts in earnest, punches hardly pulled anymore, the pair of them going back and forth relentlessly in the warm air of the gym. Then she manages to surprise him, a quick tug and his weight is used against him even as he forces himself to allow it, she slams her head into his back as he falls and has her hand meaningfully stuck under his plate, the tender skin firing off adrenaline and endorphins in preparation for pain that won’t actually come.

However it does make for a hell of a post-fight high as Shepard rolls off his back and collapses next to him in a happy, exhausted heap, flushed with victory. She’s going to have bruises on her arms and shins, one on her ribs because he didn’t pull a blow fast enough, but she’s smiling up at him like he bought her a new book on coding and tied it to a sniper rifle.

“That felt better, smoother.” She sits up and does her cooldown exercises. “Bet I can handle most things Omega can throw at me.” The easy bravado worries him, she’s getting too big for her boots and by Aralakh he hopes he’s the one who will be there to remind her that she’s still just a little shit in reality, not some hotshot Captain who can shrug off normal reactions to her behavior.

More than anything, he hopes nobody else gets the same idea to knock her down a peg.

“Well not everything.” She turns her face towards him halfway, not even pausing in her stretches. “You don’t know the first thing about clubbing or bars.”

“Sure I do.” She responds, vapid, cheery. “Find the barkeep, pay for info, if they got nothing, move on.”

“No Jane.” Oh god he’s really going to do this. He’s really going to sit down with this brilliant fiery girl who has been making eyes at boys and men dirtside this past year, her terror of males and their desires barely a bad memory these days. He is really going to try and keep a child of his from knocking boots and having biological kids, a child that can have kids at any time by accident. He never thought the day would come. In fact it seems wrong to be warning any child of his not to reproduce if they could. “I want to be clear on this, you’re old enough and don’t look like rough trade. People will try and talk you into-“ all the books said to be gentle, but it was hard to find the words. “Look, sentient beings down there are going to try and get in your underaged pants.” She tenses, all pretense of nonchalance gone.

“And I want you to be safe, you got your whole life kid, hatchlings will slow you down at this age. Cards on the table, hide your porn better and this would never have been something we had to hash out." She makes a strangled squawk of horror that will haunt her in the years to come, he can feel it. Well Wrex feels it and also is plotting how to hold it over her head already. "So when we dock, I am going to give you ten credits and look the other way, then I want you to buy a box of condoms. Then we can never speak of this again.”

“You got it.” She manages to squeak out before dashing away.

When they disembark Shep is swathed in an unattractive grey sweater too big for her and unflattering slacks. And that solves his concerns about his kid ever getting any, right on the spot.


	6. Year 11 / Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has always been careful...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had some problems the past few months with the death of a friend in a car crash, working, going back to college, and nearly falling off a zipline (longer story than you'd think), so I had little will/energy to write. Hopefully that can change.

Year 11: November, 19, 2171,

The Norak, en route to Thessia

 

This was her rite, as far as Wrex is concerned, and she has excelled. She joined him on the ground, just this once, and they did what they did best. They worked towards a common goal.

 

Jane had built herself around his weak points without him noticing. She was a hacker, a sniper, she moved in the shadows while he moved in the light of wreckage. She had been the one to figure out where the imprisoned Asari were being held within the base, she was the one to help coax them out and onto the stolen shuttle. This had been her moment, despite Wrex acting as bait to distract the Batarian slavers.

Now they were headed to Thessia, their charges safe in the spare cabin while they cleaned guns and buffed dirt from their armor in the gym.

 

Shepard had grown into her seventeen years of life with a vengeance, her long red hair had been viciously hacked off to her chin, her hands and one cheek were dusted with light scars that you hardly noticed. She walked and talked like a Krogan, breathed and bled like a human. Soon he would be saying goodbye to her, watching her enlist in the Alliance come April.

 

“Alright you dinosaur, what's bugging you?” She asks abruptly, eyes still trained on her Mantis even as she talked. “Something is, don't lie, you're quieter than usual, you hover as much as you possibly can, Urd is all twitchy around you, so spill.”

 

He wants to say all the things he feels, his pride at her growth tempered with fear for his only offspring. How he holds that flicker of rage that most Krogans get when their Krantt splits up willingly. He wants to bring up his doubts that she’ll be able to handle the marines without a hitch, and tack on the shame that she is so ignorant of her own heritage. His premature glee that she’ll be like a bomb going off in the ranks with her attitude and personality. None of those make it out though. So instead he mutters something brusque about having to feed so many damn sentients and drops his gear on the floor with a clatter.

 

“The hell that’s it! What’s really bugging you?” Wrex’s temper flares a bit and he growls. “Oh, angry? Good.” She’s putting aside the rifle and then she’s on the mats, cracking her knuckles. “Bring it on then, if I win you tell me what pissed in your ryncol.”

 

“If I win you shut the hell up.” He grits out, watching her bob in place, waking her muscles back up. And for some reason the sight infuriates him.

 

He bellows and charges at her, She barely dodges the brunt of his blow, rolling backwards only to pop back up with a snarl and a nasty uppercut. He recovers just in time to get another strike, and another. However he has something he needs to hide, to keep Shepard from seeing, his newfound weakness. He spends a good twenty seconds trying to get her in a lock but she’s faster than Wrex ever was. He lands a solid blow to her ribs though, and that turns the tide. It’s all she can do to stay standing under his barrage of fists, everything skewing a little red in Wrex's vision. She _can't_ be allowed to know!

 

Then she gasps and he hears a tiny crack that makes everything stop.

 

The blooming pain on her face is different than if she had a bruise or when she had come off the battlefield today. This is _anguish_ that you only feel when your family found their claws and took a swipe when you had your guard down. She breaks away, her eyes blooming reflexive tears as he stumbles back, turning his gaze to her limp arm as he does.

 

He has always been careful, he had tried so hard to make accommodations his own father never would have, wary of sparring all out, keeping her on the sidelines, avoiding his temper getting a hold for so damn long. And now he’s broken her left arm.

 

He backs away as she whimpers, looking to him with those wide green eyes, like he wasn't the monster that _snapped her fucking arm_. Shepard only looks like a seven year old girl who wants so badly for Wrex to fix her, to make her all better.

 

He turns his back and scrabbles for medical supplies they never needed to touch, because he can’t look at her anymore. Can’t ever look her in the eye again after this.

 

The quiet is anything but comforting as he slathers medigel and bandages over the injury. At first he had needed to push the bone back into place, and she had shrieked at that, her face taut and marred by pain. After the air is full of her labored breathing and the rustle of bandages unrolling. Wrex has no idea how long they’re there, he doesn't look at her the entire time, not even when she manages to whisper “guess you won.”

 

~o~o~o~

 

He hears the door open to his quarters and quick steps, then his daughter headbutts him like a sledgehammer.

 

“I’d invite your ass to a goddamn crush if I thought you’d even hear the invitation over your pity party.” Jane is livid, her every syllable, every muscle, tensed like a bowstring. “That was an accident. Don’t you fucking dare do this to me, Dad.” her voice cracks as she pushes out one more word. “Please.”

 

Then Jane is down on her knees, forcing him to meet her gaze. A day makes a world of difference, only the light bandages indicating that she’s not up to speed. She’s so stubborn, making him look her in the eye as she stares right back. “That was an _accident_. You did not mean to do it. And I’ll kick you in the quads before I let you stay in here to stew in your own misplaced guilt any longer.”

 

And surprisingly, she manages to make him stand up and look her in the eye after a few weeks. But he will always bear that shame: and he will never dishonor her by saying the things he hurt her to hide, not now, not ever.

 


	7. Year 12 / Nothing Without You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Letting her go...  
> A short chapter to get me back into the swing of writing these two.

Year 12: April 13, 2172

SSV Orléans Dock H14: Arcturus Station

 

He doesn’t know why he focuses so hard on the size of her backpack, but it seems so small and insufficient to Wrex. Jane has always traveled light, carrying as little as she can manage. Wrex’s apartment is where Shepard stores all her treasures that are any bigger than an eye. She seems fine with it though, excited with her future in the military. He won’t spoil this by thinking about the years she spent without anything worth carrying, much less saving. This is not a day he will let be tainted by worry or bad memories, he will be a proud father, he will be a steady support, he will not ruin this.

“You have your omnitool?” she nods “And your epipen? You know where to go right? I have no cl-”

“Dad, I’ve got this.” Jane laughs, her nose bearing a new scar from an ill-advised joyride on Sanves two months ago. She had only just bought the Cricket a week before, madly in love with the idea of a hoverbike she could use planetside, obsessing over the black and gold paint job like a lovesick girl. That paint job was ruined, just like the exhaust manifold crushed against a tree that he still cannot understand not noticing until the bike broadsided it.

He is proud of that scar in a way though. It is a scar any dumb kid might have, it didn’t come from a bullet or from a knife fight, the only foe involved was a damn plant. She has a normal story to tell, and he hopes that she finds a friend out there in the endless stars that will tell her one in return. “Don’t go crying to me when basic is too easy. Take orders but remember that you better be damn sure if you let loose a bullet that you can live with it. And for the love of Shiagur check that what you’re eating doesn’t contain peanuts!”

“Yikes, what is this, an Asari coming of age vid? I’ll be fine. Basic ends in August, and Benning has com terminals at least, you can call me when you get to miss me.”

“And you can call me when you get court martialed for being an insubordinate brat.” He doesn’t even flinch as she impacts into his chest, clinging tight like she’s a kid again. He would lay down creds that they’re getting funny looks, but he lets himself enjoy this. She smells like sun-baked ground and new clothing, he can barely pick out the smell of gun polish from her in the middle of the dock. Urd whines by their feet, and twines around Jane’s legs like he somehow knows she isn’t going for a short trip.

“All SSV Orléans crew prepare to board,  cast off in 30 minutes. All recruits report to the bridge in 20.” Shepard lets go and grabs her bag, eyes alight as she gives Urd a final pat and Wrex a last headbutt. She’s still stumbling from the impact when she vanishes into the umbilical chamber, grinning as long as her face is visible.

Wrex waits those 30 minutes until she starts sailing away from him into the black ocean and isn’t alone. A mother sits with him as the minutes pass, eyes glassy with tears but back straight. No words are said, she just exhales and gives him a solid clap on the shoulder as she gets up and leaves.

 


	8. Year 16 / Everything

Year 16: March, 20, 2176

Hospital Ángeles México, Mexico City, Earth

 

Wrex rockets into the Alliance hospital, slamming into the front desk hard. The man behind it has wide eyes but to his credit, doesn't look too shocked to see him.

“Urdnot Wrex?” He asks in a trembling voice, “I presume?”

“Where is she?” The man motions for him to sign in and then hastily leads him off to a lift. Words are said but Wrex doesn't hear them, he focuses on his little warrior, hardly little now, so much quieter than he can stand to see, and yet he can't bear to look away. She's draped in blue as an OR team works over her past the thick glass. Her hair still looks singed at the ends, and ragged like it had all been hacked off in a big hurry, the fiery strands nothing more than a memory from a week ago. Hanks of crimson shorter than her tiny human hands wisp out from under a sterile cap. This was her shore leave. This wasn't a battle, it was a killing spree that his baby girl had been caught in and turned around. Jane is so brave, so stubborn, so fragile. 

 

She forgets that sometimes, forgets she isn't invincible.

 

The last four years have been a steady stream of vidmail, Shepard’s face as she got through training, received her first assignment, cooed over Urd, bitched about the rundown Mako her squad has to ride in on survey missions, and shared her eternal frustration with the MREs. A few face to face visits peppered the lonely months. There was one a year at least, every July 23rd, to eat chinese food and sleep in the living room, dragging him into the ritual, like a willing satellite after a planet.

 

And he wasn't there to keep her safe.

 

"Externally she's bruised and beat to hell. Left leg is damaged down to the muscle and her face will have scars. Internally she's got a lacerated kidney, a collapsed lung, and could go septic if we aren't careful removing all the shrapnel in her torso. Infection is a major concern with cases like hers. She was found later than we would have hoped, but not so late that we can't have a great deal of optimism. It’s a miracle she was only this bad off." Explains a doctor as Wrex watches them open her up. Wrex makes himself watch. He has to watch this and be sure that she breathes through this and keeps breathing. "The thing we are the most worried about is if she can just survive the surgery."

 

She’s red on the inside, just as if her hair was a preview to what lay within. She burns a bright crimson with hints of white or grey visible, but all he can think of is the parts that are  _ red red red _ . She’s flayed open like a hunting trophy, and he remembers his father telling him to eat the heart first after a kill. Hers would be hardly a mouthful, pumping and fighting within its cage of bone and sinew to keep his daughter alive. He hadn't been there and he can't help here, he can only watch when the surgeons slowly pull out hunks of metal that seem too small to have even slowed down a person like Jane. She would be offended by them, and Wrex for one beautiful horrible moment thinks she will stand up and smile, laid open with her arms wide open and blood running out until there was enough to drown the world.

 

He has a horrible moment of realization, that he can't even bury his little daughter on his homeworld like any other krogan. Her bones would never be accepted, and so what could he do then, without even a proper place to watch over in the aftermath of his galaxy crashing to bits around him? He has nobody in the clan that would sit with him to send her off, to talk to about her bravery with. He can't fight this, can't help her, or make her smile. All he can do is watch this woman who is everything to him lay there with her life in the hands of strangers.

 

He stands there for what could be anywhere from one hour to eternity before he snaps and punches straight through a wall.

 

~o~o~o~

 

He sits by her bed a lot longer than that.

 

Infection does set in, making medigel far less effective than it could be. The doctors keep her under for nearly a week to fight the worst of it. Meanwhile the news crews all circle and peck like vultures as the Alliance refuses to share her information, to let them know where she is beyond a simple "Earth" from an older man with nut brown skin and a heavy gaze. After stating that simple word Anderson sat with Wrex three times, his quiet presence never registering as a threat, staying no less than an hour each time. Most of that week Wrex is alone.

 

The shadows in her room lengthen in the night, and he checks restlessly, ceaselessly, to be sure that she still has a pulse. She looks pale and small under the sheets. He nearly fights an orderly who startles him in the early hours of Tuesday morning. He wants anything to happen, the waiting will kill him. They take her off sedation 6 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes after she was admitted to the hospital. She wakes up 7 hours later.

 

He most certainly does not weep like a softshelled hatchling when Jane finally opens her bright green eyes. Nor panic when she promptly tries to remove her ventilator like it offended her deeply and personally. The nursing staff that come in and remove the damn thing properly to replace the tubes with a simple mask never whispered a word to the contrary.

 

The next time Anderson sits with Shepard, (newly promoted to Major) Wrex is finally asleep and Shepard is fusing spoons and circuit boards together with her omnitool. The old krogan wakes to the pair attempting to send an old fashioned distress signal to a nearby barbeque joint because the hospital food is just pathetic.

 

They manage to sneak a war hero, an old fashioned wheelchair, and an IV line out for pulled pork sandwiches before the tracking chip on the equipment is properly traced back to them.

  
Worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter titles are these wonderful songs that I in no way own.
> 
> The Lost Child by Toby "Radiation" Fox  
> Always Know Where You Are by John Rzeznik and performed by BBMak  
> Honeybee by Steam Powered Giraffe  
> Build A Home by The Cinematic Orchestra  
> Guts by All Time Low  
> Demons by Imagine Dragons  
> Nothing Without You by Dylan Gardner  
> Everything by Lifehouse


End file.
